How To Make Free Games With Unity 3D

In some of the other posts on this blog we mainly talk about game creation tools which are drag and drop and programming is not required. However, in this post we are going to talk about Unity 3D which is an advanced game creation tool which has it’s own web player which is similar to Flash (though the amount of people who have it installed is not quite as many as Flash). As you may have guessed Unity 3D is a game creation tool mainly for 3D games as that is what it does best. Additionally, it will publish your games to iOS and Android (not to mention the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360). However, only publishing to the web is free as the other platforms require a paid license.

Unity 3D is not for the feint of heart or if you are easily distributed. It can take longer to build an create a 3D game that it does for a 2D. Unity 3D also requires programming. If you are looking for something more drag and drop with no coding required you should try something like Pulado to make your own games. It comes with demos and things but be prepared to write code before you download it. According to their website it does include an editor that has real time editing. So you can be “playing” through the game and at the same time you can jump in and start editing objects at the same time. The scriping languages that you can use to code in Unity 3D are Javascript (which is very similar to ActionScript), C#, and a Python variant called Boo.

Unity 3D also has an asset library and store where other users can sell components and assets that they have created to other users of Unity 3D. This is a really handy service to have because it allows people to modify the engine or provide assets that you can then just purchase without having the take the time to re-invent the wheel yourself.

The main drawbacks for using Unity 3D are probably the paid licenses for publishing to mobile and the fact that it takes a special plugin that users have to download in order to start playing games on the web built with Unity 3D. This will get easier as more and more people have the plugin installed. Additionally, they are working on the ability for Unity 3D to export to an SWF file which would then be playable in any browser that has Flash installed. Suffice to say that sounds pretty cool. If you are looking to have a multiplayer game it also supports the same kind of multiuser servers that support Flash like SmartFox and Electrotank.

If you already know how to script and or create 3D art and you want to make a 3D game then Unity 3D is probably one of the best ways to go right now. Check it out here.